Kyle Brennan, the 40-year-old son of former CIA Director John Brennan, was taken into custody by FBI agents at his workplace in Herndon, Virginia on Friday afternoon and charged with a felony count of transportation of child pornography, the Daily Mail reports.
According to a sworn affidavit entered into court on Friday, the FBI’s review of Brennan’s iPhone “observed approximately 88 images that appeared to depict minor girls, including prepubescent girls, engaged in sexually explicit conduct.”
The affidavit also describes an image of a female toddler, and another of a pubescent girl whose wrists and ankles were bound and whose mouth was gagged.
The criminal complaint was signed by a Virginia judge on Friday, and Brennan was scheduled to make his first appearance in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia later in the day. The FBI executed a search warrant on his personal cell phone Thursday night, according to a law enforcement source cited by the Mail.
Police reports say the iPhone was obtained during a traffic stop on July 24, 2024 – but the investigation wasn’t referred to the FBI until Oct. 2, 2026, more than two years later.
The arrest comes as the Justice Department’s investigation into his father appears to have stalled. John Brennan, who ran the CIA under President Barack Obama, is reportedly a “subject” of the DOJ’s so-called “grand conspiracy” probe, which is examining whether Obama-era officials conspired to manufacture the Trump-Russia collusion narrative ahead of the 2016 election.
Brennan himself remains a “target” of a narrower investigation into whether he lied to Congress in 2023 about the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia sought to help Trump in 2016, his attorney Ken Wainstein said in a September court filing that also disclosed a subpoena for Brennan to appear before a federal grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida. Brennan has vehemently denied the allegation.
The grand conspiracy case has ground to a halt in recent months. In September, the Daily Mail reported that Trump loyalist Kurt Olsen and at least six other prosecutors had left the investigation in the Southern District of Florida, following pressure from DOJ officials in Washington to secure indictments before the midterm elections, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The Justice Department has rejected any suggestion that top officials pressured prosecutors to bring charges before the inquiry was complete.
Developing…
